Quality of Life
by Argyle.S
Summary: Kara has a hard day, and Nia helps her deal with it. Kara/Nia


Notes:

Based on the Prompt: Nia using her key to Kara's apartment for the first time when she's coming back late from work. She finds Kara passed out on the couch in a Stitch onesie, surrounded by empty ice cream containers, and Sponge Bob playing on TV.

I couldn't quite figure out how to work the onesie in.

Also, I wrote this while I had a pounding headache. If it's full of horrible typos, I'm sorry.

Updated: Story has now been Betaed by Butch-kickassidy

* * *

Nia was in a really foul mood, and she hated it. She wanted tonight to be a happy night, because days like today, days where Kara couldn't save people were always rough. It never stopped her. Once a month, like clockwork, Supergirl visited the Lena Luthor Children's Hospital in National City, and spent the whole day visiting with the patients.

Nia had covered it for CatCo once. She'd spent the whole day with Kara, and Kara had smiled and played and laughed and hugged. She'd flown children around the room, and frozen glasses of water solid, only to melt the ice with her heat vision. The kids had all loved her, and Kara hadn't stopped smiling until they got back to Kara's apartment. They'd come in, and Kara had gone straight to the couch and sat down.

Nia had seen the aftermath enough by then to know what was coming. She'd wrapped her arms around her girlfriend and held her when the crying and the sobbing came. Powerlessness was never a good emotion on Kara. Especially when there were children involved.

She'd known today was the day. Had done everything she could to make sure she was home. The day had been going really well, until President Baker had tweeted his support of Miranda Crane's 'Build the Dome' bill, and the news cycle had gone insane. James, knowing where Kara was, and knowing what he knew about Nia, put her on the alien beat. Nia had spent the next few hours gathering reactions from aliens and writing an alien on the street reaction piece, along with a few other bits and pieces for insertion into other articles. She'd submitted the piece, and been on the way out the door, when Lena had remembered that Nia had a degree in policy and asked her to stay and writing a piece on the shift from pro-alien to anti-alien in government over the last year.

Nia had wanted to say no, had wanted to stomp her foot and tell Lena that she needed to get home, because Kara would be hurting, but she couldn't. Lena still wasn't in on the secret, and after the Harun-El, and what it had done to Alex, Nia didn't think she ever would be. So, she'd stayed, cursing Lena's good memory, and secret identities, and men and women like Baker and Marsdin and Hayley who made them necessary, while she'd written twenty column inches on why Baker's current policies were idiotic, xenophobic, and ultimately self-destructive. It was brutal and scathing and vitriolic and far, far angrier than her normal work, but Nia had filed it and hadn't waited around for editorial response before she'd been out the door.

She'd made it from CatCo plaza to Hammersmith Tower in less than ten minutes, her nights in costume and her habit of wearing sensible shoes both working to her advantage as she cut her normal travel time in half. She stomped her way up four flights of stairs cursing the perpetually out-of-order elevator, and she took one of her most treasured possessions out of her purse. The key Kara had given her just a week earlier. She slid it in the look for the first time, and turned it, smiling when the lock opened, and feeling honored that Kara trusted her this way and so many others.

She opened the door and stepped inside. She knew it was worse than she had expected by the darkened apartment, lit only by the TV at the far end. She dropped her keys in her purse, hung it and her coat next to the door, and made sure the door was locked before crossing over to the couch.

She smiled, just a little when she saw Sponge Bob on the TV, but then she saw the three empty containers of ice cream and looked down and saw Kara on the couch, in her suit, clutching a large stuffed Stich doll in her arms, with dried tear tracks on her cheeks.

This was going to be so much worse than she expected.

She sat down on the edge of the couch and gave Kara a little shake. Kara woke with a start, and looked up at her in confusion, but then after a second, she sat up and pulled Nia into a tight hug, and Nia hugged her back, squeezing as hard as she could.

"I love you," Nia said.

"I love you too," Kara said.

"Tell me?"

"She was seven," Kara said. "She's just seven years old."

"I'm sorry, love," Nia said.

"We could have regrown her kidneys. Or made her artificial ones," Kara whispered.

Nia closed her eyes and ran her hand up and down Kara's back, digging the heel of her palm in so Kara could feel the contact through the cape and her suit. She knows it's what Kara needs right now. Tactile contact to root her in the now, to remind her of where she is, and to draw her out of the tragedy she couldn't stop, and the guilt Kara felt because of all the gifts and miracles that had died with her world. To drag her out of blaming herself for not having the entire width and breadth of Kryptonian science and technology in her head.

"Be here with me, love," Nia whispered.

Kara squeezed her a little tighter. Nia turned and placed a kiss next to her ear.

"Why can't I save them?" Kara asked, a note of pleading in her voice.

"You do. Every time you go, you do." Nia pulled back, so she could look Kara in the eye. "You give them hope, and joy, and wonder. You light up their day. You make their lives better, Kara. Even if it's just for a few minutes or a few hours."

"You really think so?" Kara asked.

"I know so," Nia said. "That's what you did for me. That day, on the side of the road, you gave me hope that everything would be okay. That I would get my sister back. That day, in your office, when you blushed and babbled as asked me if I wanted to go on a date, you brought me joy. And that night, after you found out Alex was going to be okay, and you kissed me, I felt wonder that someone like you could fall in love with someone like me."

"How could I not?"

Nia smiled and leaned forward, resting her forehead against Kara's.

"Love, do you know what being Dreamer has taught me?"

"Tell me."

"That people have it all wrong. They talk about living long lives, but that's not what matters. You and I, we go out there, and we risk our lives every night. Chances are, one of us or both of us are going to die young. But I still go, every time, because what I had before you, and before Dreamer, it was a half a life, a destiny unfulfilled. I didn't understand it. I didn't want powers. I didn't want to be a hero. I wanted to be normal. To find someone, to settle down, to raise a family. But when you told me who you were, when you encouraged me to go out there, I felt something I didn't understand, not until I put on that suit, not until I was out there with you. But being with you, out there in a fight, or in here in this apartment, even for a day, is better than living a hundred years without you. What matters most isn't the quantity of life, it's the quality.

"That's how you save them, Kara. I know it is, because that's how you saved me."

Kara tilted her hand and leaned forward, kissing her. The kiss tasted of ice cream and cookie dough and tears, and Nia loved it, because it was Kara, and she loved everything about Kara.

"Thank you," Kara said.

"For what?" Nia asked.

"For saving me," Kara said.


End file.
